


Dance To This Beat

by RiotKid



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - High School, Ballet Dancer Tyler, M/M, Sk8r Boi AU, punk josh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 19:30:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8502532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiotKid/pseuds/RiotKid
Summary: He was a boy. He was also a boy.This could probably have been a bit more obvious. Inspired by Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavigne





	

**Author's Note:**

> i was gonna wait until it was completely finished but we all know i have no patience.

Tyler spreads his legs, sinking into a split. His arms, the only things keeping him upright, shake. He exhales slowly as the stretch burns through his thighs. It’s been way too long since he’s done this; his instructor told him to stretch daily, even when he didn’t have lessons, but. Tyler’s still a teenager, and he’s prone to fits of rebelliousness. Like skipping his stretches, or going to McDonalds, or otherwise endangering his ballet career.

 

Tyler bends at the waist, letting his hands slide forward until his torso is flat against the polished floor of the studio. He runs through a list of assignments he has to finish for tomorrow. Chemistry study guide, 20 problems for calc, analysis of Death of a Salesman— he groans as he sits up to reach for his left ankle with one arm, the other arcing gracefully over his head— and an essay on the causes of the civil war. He switches sides. Counts off the seconds as he holds the position.

 

The clock reads 3:15. He’d gotten a good head start on the study guide during lunch, and if he played his cards right, he could finish it during his cool down exercises and still catch the 4:50 bus. He relaxes back, pulling first one leg, then the other to his chest. Hold for twenty seconds, breathe through the stretch.

 

Rolling to his stomach, Tyler pushes upright, making his way to the barre to finish his warm up. Leaning into an arabesque, he catalogs his grades. His A in French is in danger of slipping to a B.

 

He makes a note to ask for extra credit.

 

-.. .- -. -.-. . .-.

 

Wednesday morning brings storm clouds, hovering thick overhead as the air clings close to Tyler’s skin. He jogs to the bus stop, his duffel bag bouncing against his hip the whole way.

 

The city bus is blessedly empty at this hour, and Tyler has a chance to finish annotating an article for AP Environmental Science.

 

When the bus lets him off a couple blocks from school, he resumes his jog, only to be disrupted by a boy zooming by on a skateboard. The pages of his article flutter in the skater’s wake, but Tyler tightens his grip, and they don’t escape.

 

He mutters disparagingly under his breath, but the stranger is long gone, obnoxious, discordant music trailing in his wake.

 

-.. .- -. -.-. . .-.

 

Later, Tyler curses again when he catches himself humming the song.

 

-.. .- -. -.-. . .-.

 

Hole in the Wall Records is just what its name suggests: a grimy little record store that always smells like weed and mothballs, and never has a lighted Open sign, but never seems to close. You can’t find it unless you know it’s there. It took a while for Tyler to find it, always bustling straight to the studio after school, but he’d been walking past right as someone was leaving, and had followed the music that had bled out the door.

 

Now, he hangs out there almost daily.

 

-.. .- -. -.-. . .-.

 

Tyler falls gracelessly against the door, letting his weight slowly creak it open. He meanders through the cluttered store until he happens upon the counter, where the _thud_ of his tower of books against the counter is lost in the music. Hopping up on the counter, Tyler slides across to the other side to fiddle with the ancient stereo. He relaxes against the register as the first chords of an Apocalyptica song fill the store.

 

After a handful of seconds, a deathly groan rises from the back room. Tyler laughs.

 

“Ty, you’re driving off the clientele,” Mark whines, sauntering out of the stockroom, his black t-shirt rumpled and dusty.

 

Tyler raises an eyebrow and gestures expansively at the abandoned store. “Who? The ones poking through your upsettingly extensive collection of Kansas vinyl, or the ones I saw leaving a few minutes ago with CDs tucked under their jackets?”

Mark interrupts his own yawn with a panicked ‘ _fuck_ ’ before he realizes. “You fucker! You can’t just pull that. I just woke up! You could tell me that the moon landing was real and I’d believe you right now.”

 

Tyler just shook his head, opening his calculus book.

 

Mark leaned on the counter, peering over his shoulder. “One of those days, huh?”

 

Tyler hums distractedly, penciling in the formula for the first problem.

 

Mark sets a lukewarm Coke by Tyler’s elbow, just out of his periphery.

 

“Can’t drink that,” Tyler says reprovingly, not looking up.

 

He swipes the Coke and pops the can open as he slides Tyler a bottle of water and a protein bar instead. “Man, you know it’s scary when you do that.”

 

Tyler shrugs and punches some numbers into his calculator.

 

Mark rolls his eyes, trudging back toward his improvised bed. “Tell me if someone comes in.”

 

Tyler makes a noncommittal noise.

 

“And you’re eating something before you leave, you hear me?”

 

Tyler shoots the protein bar a disdainful look and does not reply.

 

-.. .- -. -.-. . .-.

 

On Thursday, Tyler sleeps through his alarm and has to run to the bus stop, missing his usual bus. The next one comes fifteen minutes later, giving him enough time to cram a granola bar in his mouth and make sure he has all of his shit.

 

He doesn’t have his calculus textbook.

 

_Fuck._

-.. .- -. -.-. . .-.

 

After a remarkably terrible pop quiz in French and getting chewed out in front of his entire class for a solid ten minutes over his missing textbook in Calc, Tyler spends his lunch period doing stretches in the empty dance room.

 

He ignores the bell; his next period is independent study, and he’s already there. A couple other students trickle in and start their floor stretches while he moves to the barre, but he pays them no mind.

 

Ms. Grant, the supervising teacher, graciously allows him ten minutes of violent- edging on unsafe- flexibility exercises before she calls him out to the hall, where he receives a concerned lecture on taking care of himself. Before she lets him go, she shoves five dollars into his palm, and orders him to go to the Starbucks down the street.

 

He almost protests- audition season looms in the near future and the last thing he needs is a cardboard cup full of sugar- but the look in her eyes is inching toward dangerous and hot chocolate sounds heavenly, so he hands her his flats, slips on his sneakers, and goes.

 

-.. .- -. -.-. . .-.

 

It rains. Hard. By the time he bursts into the record store, Tyler is drenched and irritable.

 

There’s a boy slouching against the counter to talk to Mark, and Tyler arrives just in time to hear the kid scoff, " _please_ ,ballerinas are so fuckin’ pretentious, like gimme a break. I could do that, you ain’t special.”

 

Tyler barks out a laugh, angry and loud. “You’re kidding me, right? With a form like that?” He gestures at the boy’s body, which, admittedly is both visually pleasing and corded with a good amount of the muscles needed for dancing. “You’d barely make it through one rehearsal, and I’d bet my college fund you’ll never be able to dance en pointe.”

 

Now that Tyler’s stopped to actually _look_ at him, he recognizes the scruffy teen as the asshole who’d nearly knocked him down the day before. At the sight of the boy’s flabbergasted face (which is at least as nice as the rest of him), Tyler has to quell the urge to shrink back, stammer out an apology.

 

He lifts his chin slightly, clenches his jaw.

 

Mark’s eyes dart between them as the kid removes his backwards cap to run a hand through his cotton candy curls.

 

After a minute of sizing Tyler up, the boy thrusts a hand toward him. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Josh, and I think I’d like to take you up on that bet.”

 

Mark groans, letting his face drop onto the counter.

 

Tyler smiles, a nasty, vindictive thing, but a smile nonetheless.

 

He shakes Josh’s hand. “I’m Tyler. Nice to meet you.”


End file.
